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Comment by pizza234 | Hacker News Reader

I needed a similar setup some time ago, and I was so frustrated by the Linux remote desktop open source solutions, that I ended up using Nomachine, which turned out to be very impressive.

I'm mystified by the enormous gap between the open source solutions and Nomachine, both in the technical and usability areas. The open source solutions are sadly terrible; those who aren't convinced, just try Nomachine.

It's puzzling because solutions like X2Go (which I found to be the most usable) rely on older NX protocol versions (v3 was open), but still, they have terrible performance. This means that in the last 10 years, there has been no virtually development in the open source remote desktop field.

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Have you tried xrdp? Here's an example usage [1]. Your X server would run a sort of RDP emulation layer, and then any RDP client works. Obviously you'd tunnel it over a VPN or SSH.

I haven't used NoMachine in like 10 years or so. Back in the days (~15 years ago), I used to run it on UltraSPARC machines running Debian and Gnome. It worked marvelous, even with a FOSS server (FreeNX IIRC). It even worked on the Nokia N-series! Although it sucked to run it on a Mac; you had to run a complete X server, which looked terrible (including the fonts).

[1] https://github.com/deskor/xrdp

I've tried xRDP and it is still as terrible for fluid workstation interactions as is the whole RDP protocol. Sending only changing parts of the display is a great concept for data use reduction, but a quick x264 compression and simple input replication works much better on systems with 100Mb+ connections

Yes (specifically, the original distribution (https://github.com/neutrinolabs/xrdp) and the one provided in the repository of my o/s), and it fell flat on the usability side - gave me a blank screen after logging in. Gave up after an hour or two of attempts. X2Go worked straight out of the box, but it's very slow (on a 10 Mbit home wifi connection).

Xrdp has horrendously bad documentation and installation scripts but it does mostly work after configuration.

You have to manually edit /etc/xrdp/startwm.sh to make xrdp launch a desktop environment when it accepts a connection. If you don't do this, you'll get a blank screen or something non-useful, like a session with just one Xterm window and no desktop environment.

Note that Linux does not support shifting sessions from the local keyboard, mouse & screen to remote access. Further, the major desktop environments don't support simultaneous sessions from the same user.

With any of the remote access tools that don't simply take over the local screen and keyboard, if you have an active session on the physical screen, you won't be able to connect to it remotely, nor will you be able to start a new session remotely under the same login. you'll need to log out from the physical screen before attempting a remote connection.

Finally, Xrdp clipboard sharing does not work with Linux clients.

I also hate all open source Remote Desktop solutions, but I ended up using SPICE with Proxmox. Nothing else will forward audio and handling Remote Desktop at a virtualization level is the most reliable and flexible of everything else that I have tried.

Only downside is that it doesn’t work with LXC containers, but that’s not a big problem considering only five or so machines need graphics.

EDIT: another downside is lack of client support on iOS. I’d love to work on my iPad with a Magic Keyboard but no client exists that handles SPICE AFAIK.

Can you please explain how you setup nomachine to use your Android tablet as a second monitor

Nomachine is my savior. I love it.

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